With regard to Rome, the local tradition, which regarded the 29th June as the day on which both apostles were put to death, was committed to writing by the chronographer of 354, and all later chronographers. A western tradition, supported by many of the great Fathers of the Church, adds further that, though both apostles died on the same day of the month, they died in different years. This idea appears in St Augustine, in the Leoninum, Arator, Gregory of Tours, and in three Greek writers, but scholars have so far ignored it. It is further evident from the Depositio Martyrum that the day of their death was specially chosen for a translation of their relics which took place in 258. The special festivities observed in Rome are described for us by Prudentius from what he had seen himself when he visited the city about 405. According to him the whole city was in commotion: the faithful visited the tombs of the apostles and in the two churches erected in their honour, pontifical mass was celebrated.[610] This is in complete agreement with the tradition according to which devotion to the martyrs was closely connected with the spot where they suffered and with the date on which they suffered, and the chief commemoration consisted in the offering up of the Holy Sacrifice over their tombs. Owing to the distance which separated the two churches of the apostles from one another, it was most fatiguing to celebrate mass at both places, and so in course of time the festival was divided into two parts, and the Mass in honour of St Paul took place on the 30th June. An examination of the earliest Roman missals shows that in the Leoninum there is a number of masses for this day, all commemorating the two apostles together, but, in the Gelasianum, on the contrary, there is only one mass for the two apostles conjointly (III. Kal. Jul. in Natali SS. Apostolorum Petri et Pauli), and, in addition, one for each of them separately. It may be that the division of the feast was then customary, but the 29th June continued to be called Natalis SS. Apostolorum Petri et Pauli. As early as the fifth century the feast was kept at Rome with a vigil and octave.[611]
At an early date, the 29th June, which had hitherto been celebrated chiefly in the West, i.e., in Rome and the surrounding districts, began to be observed as a universal festival of the whole Church, inasmuch as it began to be celebrated in Constantinople. The Roman Senator Festus, who had been sent on matters of state to the new Emperor Anastasius, in 491, moved the emperor, according to Theodorus Lector, to celebrate this feast solemnly in Constantinople.[612] Although the feast may have been kept already in Constantinople before this time, it now began to be celebrated with greater pomp. The day must certainly have been known in Constantinople before this date, but can hardly have been kept as a festival.
After this the 29th June appears in all Calendars and martyrologies as the commemoration of the two chief apostles. In the West we find it first in the Calendar of Perpetuus of Tours. The Carthaginian Calendar is unfortunately defective, but that the day was kept there cannot be doubted on account of the evidence given by St Augustine’s sermons. It is also found in the later oriental Calendars, with the exception of a few belonging to Egypt.[613]
While this feast, like the festivals of all martyrs, was originally local, and was celebrated only in Rome and in the churches dependent upon Rome, the esteem in which the Roman Church and the apostles were held early gained for it the character of a universal feast.
(2) THE FEAST OF ST PETER’S CHAINS
The Roman breviary bases the foundation for this feast upon the following legend. Eudocia, wife of Theodosius II.[614] since 421, was presented with a chain at Jerusalem which was believed to have been that with which St Peter was bound while imprisoned, as recorded in Acts, chap. xii. She brought this chain to Rome, where another chain was already preserved in the Church of St Peter on the Esquiline.[615] This is said to have been the chain with which St Peter was confined during his Roman imprisonment. Both chains appeared to be of the same workmanship, and united themselves together of their own accord. Whereupon the church was rebuilt at the Empress’s expense, and received the name of Eudoxiæ ad Vincula. There is no trustworthy proof for the presentation of the second chain by Eudocia, although there is evidence that in Rome the faithful prided themselves on possessing a chain of St Peter before this supposed gift of the Empress.[616] Under Benedict XIV. it was proposed to suppress the lections in the breviary containing these legends.
The feast of St Peter’s chain is not in the Gelasianum, and appears only in Calendars of the eighth century, as, for example, in that of Bede, but not yet as a feast of obligation. The decree of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus raised it to this rank in 1166. The spread of the feast was undoubtedly facilitated by the circumstance that in 969 a courtier of the Emperor Otho I. was healed in Rome by touching the chain.[617] That the commemoration was fixed for the 1st August does not imply that this was the day on which the apostle was set free from imprisonment; but in this, as in other cases, the date of the Church’s dedication caused this day to be chosen.
(3) THE CONVERSION OF ST PAUL
The Conversion of St Paul was kept as a holiday of obligation in several dioceses of France and Germany, and especially in England. It is uncertain where and when it first became so. It is not in the Gelasianum nor in the older editions of the Gregorianum, but appears in the later texts of more recent editions, as a later addition, for it is still frequently lacking in later MSS. and Calendars.[618] Nevertheless it appears in Ado and Usuardus. The 25th January seems originally to have had another signification; for in the recent critical edition of the Hieronymianum of De Rossi and Duchesne, the two oldest recensions give on this day a translation of the relics of St Paul, which is said to have taken place in Rome (Romæ, Translatio B. Pauli Apostoli). The most recent of the ancient codices, that of Metz, now in Bern, belonging to the tenth century, has a translation and conversion of St Paul on the 25th January. The idea of the conversion soon replaced that of the translation, and fixed the character of the feast. As such it spread, and soon attained to universal acceptance. The translation which the feast originally commemorated is believed by De Waal to have taken place in the time of Constantine, when the basilica of St Paul was erected[619] (Translatio et Conversio S. Pauli in Damaso, the words conversio and in Damaso being added by a later hand).